Ensino de astronomia: o lúdico e a experimentação como estratégias pedagógicas no ensino médio

Abstract

The contemplation of the sky and the curiosity to unravel its mysteries has moved man from the beginnings of the civilization to obtain understandings on what surrounds him. Many scientists and philosophers regard astronomy as the first human knowledge organized systematically. Thus, starting from this natural curiosity, the teaching of Astronomy should spark the students that interest, by promoting greater appreciation and approximation of this science that is part of our lives in several aspects that are directly or indirectly supplied and/or explained by information and inspiration coming from Astronomy. The main objective of this research is to understand the potentialities and limitations of the use of playful and experimental activities for the learning of basic concepts of Astronomy by students of the 1st year of High School. We assume the qualitative research, in the participant research modality, as these kinds of research approach aspects of student's reality when promoting collective actions for the benefit of the school community. The results show that the strategy in using ludic activities and experiments in order to facilitate the learning can show factors that favored the teaching and learning of Astronomy. For application of the activities with the students, we used three pedagogical moments by Delizoicov, Angotti and Pernambuco. The students participated actively in the development of playful activities such as play activities and games and in the conduction of the proposed experiments, where we can verify the potential of strategies used in the classroom in a positive way to build students' knowledge. This research also generated a didactic product that appears as an Appendix in this dissertation. It is an orientation to the teacher, with guidelines and suggestions of playful and experimental activities for teaching Astronomy which provide reflections on scientific knowledge, emphasizing the investigative character, enabling students to construct knowledge in a more critical and participative approach in society. In this sense, this research reports the ludic and experimental activities as possibilities to foster the teaching of Astronomy in Basic Education, enabling a closer approximation of teachers and students of this area of knowledge.